Click here for Full Issue of Fidelio Volume 13, Number 1-2, Spring-Summer 2004 S YMPOSIUM Classical Drama & Historical Specificity Drama As History Clifford Odets’ The Big Knife And ‘Trumanism’ Following the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, by Harley Schlanger President Harry S Truman arrives at the Potsdam Conference, July, 1945. n his keynote address to the conference yesterday, today, is something much worse than what we faced in Lyndon LaRouche warned that we face the most the 1930’s, with the Depression and fascism. Iprofound crisis in the history of civilization, and we Now, there are still some people who don’t get that discussed this over the two days: The deepening global point. They say, “Isn’t Lyn exaggerating? I don’t really depression, the spread of war, the danger that this will see that.” I would call to their attention events that we continue to spread under the Cheney doctrine, and also here on the West Coast know very clearly from last year. we’ve talked about a new dark age, something that We had an event which occurred last year, which was the LaRouche has been discussing for many, many years. election of Arnold Schwarzenegger. This is a picture of And which, for many years, we have also discussed in the our famous leaflet [SEE illustration]. We discussed with organizing. Lyn how to bring home the horror of the Recall election, And, I think, too often it has become a catch-phrase, in which a bad actor, a product of steroids and special or a slogan, as opposed to really understanding what we effects, was about to become the Governor of the largest mean by a dark age, a new dark age. What LaRouche and wealthiest state in the country, which, in the past said yesterday, very strongly, is that what humanity faces anyway, proclaimed itself to be the sixth-largest economy in the world, if it were a nation. –––––––––– How did Schwarzenegger become Governor of Cali- Harley Schlanger is Western States spokesman for Lyndon fornia? This should tell you something about the cultural LaRouche’s Presidential campaign, LaRouche in 2004. This crisis we face today. What have the voters of this country article is adapted from a panel presentation on “‘The Big become, and what will we tolerate? The idea of man Knife’ and Trumanism,” at the ICLC/Schiller Institute Pres- seeking pleasure, a pleasure-seeking society, a post-indus- idents’ Day Conference, Feb. 15, 2004, in Reston, Virginia. trial economy, an entertainment culture: Isn’t this exactly An excerpt from Robert Beltran’s remarks at the panel what preceded the takeover of Hitler in Nazi Germany? appears on page 84 of this issue. What we saw in the 1920’s, nihilism, pessimism, the 78 © 2004 Schiller Institute, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission strictly prohibited. philosophy of Nietzsche, LaRouche in 2004 leaflet: Heidegger, Nazi philo- Arnold Schwarzenegger sophers, who promoted and Adolf Hitler—both “Beast-Men.” the idea of man as a beast. This was the cabaret society of Berlin in the 1920’s. And yet, the LaRouche Youth what do we have today, Movement, we want to in 2004? What charac- launch a renaissance in terizes our popular cul- the United States, and ture today? Janet Jack- worldwide, which would son’s famous moment at sweep away today’s all- the Super Bowl. And, powerful culture of fast if you look closely at food, fast sex, fast mon- that, how is that differ- ey—the culture of deca- ent from the movie dence which all of us Cabaret? [SEE illustra- have grown up in. tions] I would say it’s Now, we got a glim- worse in many ways. mer of that over the last So, we are in a tragedy, we face a dark age. And two days with the two youth panels—the potential for a we’ve come to a moment of punctum saliens, a moment renaissance in the United States, one which includes sci- of decision, as in Classical tragedy, where we are all on entific discoveries and breakthroughs, by looking at the the stage of history—or, as Lyn has been saying, we are time of the American Revolution, the precedents for the in the arena of the Colosseum, and either we make the American Revolution, and the antecedents, rather, of right decision now, or we face one of the darkest Leibniz, Franklin, Gauss, the work in science. tragedies in history. We see the same thing on the cultural side: Germany’s Weimar Classical period, built upon the work of Bach, The Problem of ‘Trumanism’ Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, as well as the literary-dra- matic side, Shakespeare, Moses Mendelssohn, Lessing, Now, LaRouche recently, in the “Tariffs and Trade” and Schiller. Now, there’s an interesting question, if we paper,1 took up this question. He asks, “What is tragedy? look at this 250-year cycle, the one which we have come It is the failure to meet the to the end of: The United States did emerge as challenge of the future; it is the one alternative to an otherwise unbroken the failure to bring forth era of oligarchical domination, an era of men as today, that which the small beasts, men as animals. The United States mind deems a ‘seemingly demonstrated, through the work of Hamilton, impractical’ action, but an action on which the possibility of existence of an acceptable tomorrow depends.” If we are to survive today, we require two “seemingly impractical” events. The first is to elect Lyndon LaRouche Presi- dent of the United States. Which is, seemingly, im- practical. But second, as Popular culture today replays the 1920’s part of that same process, prelude to Nazi takeover. Above: Liza especially through the Minnelli stars in “Cabaret.” Right: Janet work that is being done by Jackson at the Super Bowl. 79 Franklin, Washington, courageous leaders such as Lin- source of that corruption, generated during the Truman coln and Franklin Roosevelt, that a republic will work, a years, which was passed down over subsequent successive republic can function. The question, then, is, what about generations by the young adults of that former time, to pro- the culture that is necessary to sustain a republic? Why duce the horror which threatens the world of the young have we had no cultural renaissance in the United States? adult of today. ... The beauty of Odets’ theme in that play is that it express- Helga Zepp LaRouche gave us part of that story in her 2 es a typically Classical artistic approach, one of exemplary presentation this afternoon on the Congress of Vienna : historical specificity toward understand an awful down- the deliberate deployment of what were essentially fas- ward turning point in the 1944-52 history of our United cist, police-state tactics, to destroy the potential among States. This drama thus expresses the same principle of pre- the young to reap the benefits of the great work of the science, which is to be found as the controlling principle of Weimar period of Schiller, Beethoven, and others. A composition in Plato’s critical view of the Classical Greek deployment to impose an anti-human culture of pes- tragedy of his time, and the plays of Shakespeare and simism on the population. Schiller.3 But, what about the United States? What’s the prob- lem here? Prescience in Classical Tragedy We had the great fortune on the West Coast this last year, to be in a sense in the middle of a production by Now, this question of prescience with Odets: Odets was Robert Beltran of a play called The Big Knife, by an on the scene in 1947-48, at the beginning of Trumanism. American playwright, Clifford Odets. And in this play, he wrote with precision of the tragedy For me, Odets was a name I knew, but I couldn’t which was only then unfolding as he was writing the play. place, and I knew none of his plays. But, by working And this raised for me an interesting question. with Robert, having the chance to meet with some of the First, where did Odets come from? And I don’t mean actors, and to participate in some limited way in a discus- Philadelphia, which is where he’s from (which is interest- sion around the play, and then the discussion with Lyn- ing in itself, he was the son of Russian-Jewish immi- don LaRouche, when he was here last September and he grants), although he spent many of his early, formative and Robert had a very productive session, and then the years in the Bronx—and, by the way, he dropped out of continued indirect discussion back and forth, we got a school at age 16! But the question: What produced new insight—yes, it can happen, even amongst Boomers, Odets? Where did Odets come from? How did we have to develop a new insight!—into “Trumanism.” this playwright, who I’ll think you’ll see from the discus- But, not just into Trumanism. And not just into the sion tonight, was a great American dramatist? How did tragedy of the life of Clifford Odets, which I’ll be cover- he come about, and why don’t we know of him? ing in a few moments. Because the play, The Big Knife, Well, he came from another seemingly impractical although somewhat autobiographical, is also metaphori- movement. That is, something which was launched by cal. The Big Knife is also a Classical tragedy, which com- Moses Mendelssohn in the middle of the Eighteenth cen- bines those elements which are essential to Classical tury in Germany, a lifelong campaign by Moses tragedy.